Praise

Praise for Sophia James

HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY

‘James weaves her spell, captivating readers with wit and wisdom, and cleverly combining humour and poignancy with a master’s touch in this feel-good love story.’

—RT Book Reviews

MASQUERADING MISTRESS

‘Bold and tantalising, plotted like a mystery and slowly exposing each layer of the multi-dimensional plot and every character’s motivations, James’ novel is a page-turner.’

—RT Book Reviews

KNIGHT OF GRACE

‘With its engaging, complex characters and complicated situations, James’ latest is a powerfully emotional story centring on a physically scarred heroine, an emotionally wounded hero and an unexpected love.’

—RT Book Reviews

ASHBLANE’S LADY

‘An excellent tale of love, this book is more than a romance; it pulls at the heartstrings and makes you wish the story wouldn’t end.’

—RT Book Reviews

‘Touch me and tell me that there is nothing at all left between us.’

Eleanor held her fists tight against her skirt. ‘The pull of flesh is only a fleeting thing. Honour and trust and duty are the tenets that a sensible woman lives by.’

‘And you are sensible?’

‘Very.’ The word was as forceful as she could make it, moulded by her depth of fear.

Unexpectedly Cristo smiled and took three steps back. ‘Logic and reason run a poor second to the heat of passion. Should you relax your guard for a moment, the truth of all you deny might be a revelation to you.’

Pursing her lips, she allowed him no leeway. ‘My life has changed completely since Paris, and I am a woman who learns well from her mistakes.’

‘Mistakes?’ He echoed the word, turning it on his tongue as if trying to understand the very nature of its meaning before finding a retort. ‘I have relegated our night together to neither blunder nor error. Indeed, I might have chanced something entirely different.’

AUTHOR NOTE

The Wellingham brothers rule Society with their wealth, titles and intellect.

You met Asher, the Duke of Carisbrook, in HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY, and Lord Taris Wellingham in ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT.

Now it’s Cristo’s turn—the youngest brother and the most mysterious.

Returning to London after many lonely years in Paris, Cristo Wellingham, the Comte de Caviglione, meets the one woman he never expected to see again—a woman ruined by the dark secrets in his past.

About the Author

SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay on Auckland New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband, who is an artist, and her three children. She spends her morning teaching adults English at the local Migrant School, and writes in the afternoon. Sophia has a degree in English and History from Auckland University, and believes her love of writing was formed reading Georgette Heyer with her twin sister at her grandmother’s house.

Previous novels by the same author:

FALLEN ANGEL

ASHBLANE’S LADY

HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY

MASQUERADING MISTRESS

KNIGHT OF GRACE

(published as THE BORDER LORD

in North America)

MISTLETOE MAGIC

(part of Christmas Betrothals) ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT

ONE ILLICIT NIGHT

features characters you will have met in

HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY and

ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT.

ONE ILLICIT NIGHT

Sophia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This book is dedicated to Frances Housden and Barbara Clendon for their help with my writing.

Chapter One

Château Giraudon, Montmarte, Paris—early November 1825

Lady Eleanor Jane Bracewell-Lowen could not quite focus on the form of the man who carried her, could not through the dizzy grey fog of lethargy see the expressions on his face or hear the cadence of his words. With a growing dread she tried to shift her weight so that he might let her down, let her escape, but even that was impossible. Nothing on her body worked and the tight mesh of the heavy wig she wore brought a strange dislocation.

She was naked! She knew that, for she had felt his hands on the curve of her breasts and in the warmth beneath her legs. Rough. Lewd. She could not even turn away in protection. Nay, sheer apathy held her caught against breath that smelt of hard liquor and bad teeth.

‘You’re too beautiful for une pute. When you finish here we’ll treat you well below.’

Une pute? A whore? Two words that did make sense. Eleanor closed her eyes against the horror of truth, this small movement all she could muster as shock made the hairs on her arms stand out straight against the chill of the night.

‘I … am … not a … whore.’ The sounds came out as only nonsense, no meaning in them as she failed to form the letters on her lips, just gibberish, fear making her feel sick.

A door opened and warmth beckoned. Beyond the darkness in a circle of light, a solitary figure sat at his desk writing.

‘Monsieur Beraud sends you a gift, Comte de Caviglione.’

She stiffened. The man she had come to see! Perhaps he would help her. If only she could speak clearly …

Silence was the only response.

‘He said that she was new to the game.’

At this the man in the shadows stood. Tall and blond, the expression on his face matched exactly the wariness of his words. His eyes were the deepest of brown.

‘Did you search her for weapons?’

‘I did much more than that, oui.’

In one movement the blanket was gone and Eleanor was set down on to a bed.

‘Merde!’ The tall man’s curse was rough. ‘You stripped her?’

‘In readiness, you understand. It’s rumoured to have been a while since you last had a woman and it’s my master’s view that the bile of celibacy can make any man cantankerous.’

Dark eyes wandered across her own and Eleanor failed to summon the energy to protest.

‘A whore who even now readies herself for your use, mon Comte, though if you do not want the gift, I could take her below …’

‘No, leave her.’ The blond man raised his hand, a flash of heavy gold rings caught in the light, the expression on his face guarded.

She tried to blink, tried to warn him, tried in the singular and only way that she could to alert him to the wrongness in all of this, but the second was gone as he looked away, his hair falling across his face as he turned.

Beautiful. At least he was that. Closing her eyes, she was lost into the ether of nothingness.

Cristo Wellingham waited until the minion of Beraud had gone before crossing the room to slide the heavy slats of oak into place.

He had never trusted locks, for a soul well versed in the art of picking them could take but a moment to force his way through any door. Neither did he trust the fact that Etienne Beraud had sent this whore to him as a gift. The man was a scoundrel and a cheat working for the French police in a way that was blatantly illicit and this ‘offering’ was undoubtedly another of his attempts to gain favour and benefit from the world surrounding the Château Giraudon.

Looking down at the girl, Cristo doubted that she was as inexperienced as Beraud claimed her to be, with her plumped-up lips and overdone face powders. She smelt of cheap drink and old perfume, the sort that was sold in the markets on a Monday where the Boulevard de Clichy crossed into the Place de Blanche.

Still to give Beraud some due, she was indeed striking, though he doubted the overlong blonde curls to be her own, wound as they were around her hips and catching the firelight in a way that seemed patently false.

Tweaking a single lock, he let it fall across her ample breasts with their pale pink nipples and a smattering of freckles.

Freckles. God. Swiping his hair, Cristo moved back, afraid suddenly of the immensity of desire that ran through him. Beraud had his reasons in trying to sweeten a deal between them, he supposed, for the wide and varied circle of acquaintances flowing through the château represented a great cross section of Paris society, making any gathering of information infinitely easier.

The girl moved, her hair falling from the line of her breast, and his body tightened unbidden. He loosened the folds of fabric around himself. Already the small whistles of slumber came from her breathing, the sleep he had seen in her blue eyes taken with all the speed of one who was not quite … cognisant.

Drugs? Or wine? With the telltale odour of alcohol on her breath he determined it to be the latter. Brandy, probably, and a dosage that was far too high for a woman so slight. If she died here …?

His fingers closed around one shapely calf and he shook her awake, pleased when her eyes opened again.

‘What’s your name?’ He didn’t particularly want to know it, but if he kept her talking she might give him some clue as to Beraud’s intentions, and with the way Fouche’s forays into politics were shaping up that could be more than useful.

The candlelight reflected in her pale eyes and she remained silent.

Sensual. Worldly. A voluptuous and erotic token from a man used to blackmailing and bribing his way into power. Why here and now? His mind ticked over the timing as he tried to determine what Beraud might gain tonight in his desire to have her in this room with him. The codes he had been working on were close to being finished. Had the French police some word of that? Even a glance from a practised eye might unearth secrets that would be better hidden and Cristo was well experienced in the fact that spies were most efficient when their form was unexpected.

The clock on the mantel chimed the hour of eleven and downstairs in the salons another bout of debauchery was in full flight. There were sounds of women laughing, a bottle being de-corked and the louder chants of men made loose with sex and spirits.

Once he would have been amongst them, taking his chances with courtesans who welcomed his attentions. But he hadn’t for an age now, the ease of orgasm no longer an opiate for what his life had become.

The girl before him moved suddenly, her scent potent, and his fingers dropped away. She was young to be so very badly used and Beraud’s taste in the intimate arts had never been simple. Two marks on her left thigh caught his attention, the burn of raised blisters sitting strangely against alabaster skin. When he leant forwards to touch the wounds she did not flinch, but watched him under languidly hooded lids.

‘Combien as tu bu, mon amour?’

How much did you drink, my love?

A murmur he could not fathom was her only answer as she turned to him, a come-hither look in the way her limbs fell loose accompanied by the heavy smell of her perfume. The powder she wore smeared beige across the white of his clean linen sheets. He hated the way his hand would not obey his mind and pull away, the heat of her quiet seduction a narcotic without rival, the contrived ‘little girl’ look a decided bonus in her line of work.

Lord. If he could have imagined a woman to ignite his fancy she would indeed have been the one lying naked and available on the bed before him.

He should leave her, should walk away and order her removed, but he found that he could not. It was the feel of her skin that pulled him closer and the shape of her hips tapering down to long and damned fine legs.

Tight bound in a growing need, one finger nudged all that was hidden and he smiled as her head arched back against the pillow. A courtesan of some skill, he determined, as her muscles coiled, tighter than a whore should ever be and her breath no longer steady. With a care that surprised him he began to stroke, wanting her pleasure to match his and their coupling to resemble something far from the quick and lurid encounter that Beraud probably had in mind. As he closed his eyes against the cosmetic accoutrements of her trade and the falseness of the wig, it was easy to imagine other things—things that were true and right and good, the world that had been his once, before his sins had changed it.

Shaking his head, he came back into the moment, years of living in Paris concentrated in his hands, fondling with pressure and rhythm, asking for response, his breath blowing cold across heat, tightening her womanhood and raising her hips.

Something was happening to her, some dreadful, exquisite, carnal thing. No longer could she lie there wooden and tense when every fibre in her body ached with a feeling of thick want.

Wrong. It was all wrong, but a stronger force now propelled her.

Farther. She wanted him to move in her farther and she could not stop the groan that left her lips or the throb-beat of her skin around the gentle warmth of his fingers. A maestro. Playing her. Taking the rigidity of fear and replacing it with a loose and easy longing. Everything. Nothing held back. Hard against soft. Surrender.

‘Shh.’ He tried to hold her still, but she would not be calmed, his fingers lending panic to the edge of her need.

Don’t stop.

Don’t leave.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the feeling that had scattered all other thoughts aside, reaching for the craving that bore her down hard against the mattress even as his clever hands squeezed the very life from honour.

He felt her come, felt the muscles close against him rigid, thick in ecstasy, her sigh all that remained of breath. Spent and replete!

His whore now. God, Beraud had the measure of him after all, Cristo thought, as he unlaced his breeches and readied himself to mount her. Her wetness beckoned, the solace of women inciting a particular appetite in him that could no longer be denied. Straddling her open thighs, he positioned himself above, parting the soft lips of her core and fitting them around his heavy thickness.

The warmth of her crept into his soul as he thrust in hard to be confronted by the one barrier he had never expected to feel there.

Virgin?

The thought was as fleeting as the breakage and the giving and his full, tight engorgement. He could not have stopped himself even had he wanted to and the seed that he seldom left in any woman spilled warm against her womb, the last whimpering of his cock a question of flesh against better judgement.

A virgin whore. A trick. His mind sharpened as he lifted himself off her, the liquid of sex on her skin.

She had turned away from him now, eyes closed against seeing, languid abandon reforming itself into a tight kind of anger that he recognised. The corruption of innocence made him swear.

Who the hell was she? Who the hell had done this? To him? To her? The look in her eyes, as he had demanded a name and the incoherent reply—asking for help?

Lord above. He had been in the game of intelligence for years now and he had missed that? Real regret surfaced and guilt that held consent sacred in any relationship. He had never been a man to use force with a woman and virginity was something to be protected and given with full knowledge. He swore again, hating Beraud anew for sending him a brandy-filled whore-virgin completely new to the game.

More questions surfaced as her medallion suddenly glinted against the pillow, the long gold necklace no longer hidden by her blonde curls. Removing it from her throat, he took it into the light and knew that the past had found him.

Tricked. Duped. Another link in the chain that bound him here, lost to the pathways of proper society and for ever shamed.

Eleanor felt a rush of imbalance engulf her. Her palms fanned wider against the whiteness beneath and she struggled to find reality.

Naked. She was naked, though such a consideration was nothing against the sudden and dreadful knowledge of what had happened. Keeping her eyes shut tightly, she wished she were dead.

‘I know you to be awake.’ In French.

She turned her head, even as she knew she meant not to.

‘Why do you wear this? ‘

He sat in a chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him and her grandfather’s medallion dangling from his fingers, the lines drawn in gold catching the candlelight and sending rainbows spinning across the ceiling. His breeches were loose and his shirt was unbuttoned at the front, the breadth and definition of his chest so remarkably foreign that she could not look away.

Parts of the last hour were coming back. A great rush of redness covered her cheeks, though when his eyes passed across the juncture at her thighs she understood that what motivated him now was only anger.

‘Who the hell are you?’

When he reached out to press the heel of his hand hard against her stomach she was mortified by the tight need that echoed from the gesture.

A whore. He had made her such! The play of his fingers against her skin made her stretch towards him, every sinew wanting …

His palm broke contact.

‘For a woman without experience you are surprisingly wanton.’

Eleanor turned her head. Below the shouts of people became louder, glass falling against a harder surface and shattering from the clumsiness of inebriation.

A brothel.

She was in a brothel on the bed of a man whose very den of iniquity it was. Deflowered.

She smiled at such a term and then felt a single tear trace its way down her cheek to be soaked up by the burgundy velvet in the pillow behind. His string of French curses told her that he had seen it too.

Lady Eleanor Bracewell-Lowen? England and the rarefied world of the ton seemed a long, long way from here.

Chapter Two

Cristo held the medallion in his fingers and hated the fear in her face.

‘Who are you?’ he repeated, his voice not quite steady. He wished he might have left her there, just walked out into the night and waited until she had gone, but life was no longer that simple for him. Beraud had brought her to him and if the woman should know anything of his past, what then? For years he had held the secrets safe. He shook his head, hard. With her maidenhead lost he felt he owed her at least something.

One moment ran into two and then five more. But still she did not speak and the heat of fury leaked out of his vengeance.

Sitting back, he weighed up the options.

She would not talk and he no longer felt the desire to make her. She was shivering, too, for the fire had long since died out, as the cold of an early Parisian November crept into the space of his chamber, raising the fine hairs on her arms.

He caught at an eiderdown of goose feathers folded on a chest at the foot of the bed and placed it across her and when one foot was still exposed he was careful to tuck it into warmness.

The first stirring of dawn was lighting the room and the bells of Sacré Coeur rang in those souls who still believed in the goodness of Our Lady. Striking a light, he breathed in the mellow taste of a cheroot, the smoke winding its way up through the lonely morning dark, another small reminder of all that he had become.

‘Mon Dieu, et quel bordel tout ceci.’

My God, and what a hell of a mess all this is.

He saw small toes wiggle free from the thick down covering as she tried to sit up.

‘Could I please have a drink?’

Six words that nearly undid him, for the quiet dignity in her request was undeniable. When he filled a glass and handed it to her she made a point of saying thank you, though the realisation that he still could not place her French accent kept him edgy.

‘How came you here?’

She remained quiet, but as the flints of blame in pale eyes continued to prick at his conscience he made an attempt at explanation.

‘I didn’t know that you had not lain with a man before. This is a place that never shelters innocents and by the time I found out that you were one, it was too late.’

An apology of sorts. It was all he could manage.

‘Then you will let me go now, monsieur?’

Turning his face towards the window, Cristo wished that he could have taken her from this room right then and there before the need his body shook with was too much to deny. But he could not, for the party below was far from over and men made careless from too much drink were always dangerous.

A temptress. A siren. The full line of her lips and the rise of her ample breasts against the softness of the cover. The sheer need of her made his voice sharper than he intended.

‘Where are your clothes?’

‘Downstairs. I took a drink … more than one.’

‘You came in with the other women, les prostituées?’

She nodded.

‘And the chain?’

‘My aunt was once given it by an English client she serviced. A bauble that was not to her taste! I liked the shape and she said that if I came with her tonight I might have it, should the evening prove a success …’

‘Your aunt is one of those below?’

When she nodded his hand closed around the engraved coat of arms and he felt the edge of the rondel dig into his palm. Was such a coincidence even possible? With a lifetime of deception behind him he knew that it was seldom the case. Could he make her talk now that she was more sober? His world reformed into only suspicion and his heart began to thump as he wondered how much Beraud might have gleaned about the meaning behind the crest.

Keep talking, Eleanor thought to herself, the fog of the drink she had been forced into taking receding into the sharper play for survival. Already the velvet darkness in his eyes looked harder, more removed. Just a whore plying her trade in a market driven by a commodity that could be given many times, the first of as little importance as the hundredth. She had to make him trust exactly that if she had any chance at all of escaping with her name intact.

‘I do not believe anything you have told me. Do you work for Beraud?’

‘Beraud?’

‘From the Parisian Police. The man who sent you to my room.’

‘I do not know the man. I came with my aunt and—’

He stopped her simply by raising a hand. ‘You lie, mademoiselle, and I intend to find out why.’

Her laugh was harsh as she bit back a reply, but he no longer seemed interested, the drag of his chair shrill against the parquet flooring as he stood and walked towards the windows.

‘Perhaps you would prefer to join the others downstairs and further your trade? You could no doubt turn a trick or two with the one who brought you in here. He certainly looked willing enough.’

True fear squeezed the very beat out of her heart. ‘Oh, I think I would rather stay with you, monsieur.’

His smile held no humour whatsoever. ‘Take care, ma chérie, of expressing any such yearning, for there are many in this game who would not give you the luxury of choice.’

Her hands fisted beneath the soft warmth of down. As you gave me no choice. She almost said it. Almost let the scalding shame escape, but didn’t, as sense embedded itself into silence.

Ruined.

The very word was written in her blood on the sheets, and the laughter from below seemed only to emphasise the silence between them, making everything more awkward again. She saw him pick up a tumbler and then place it down, undrunk, and the swell of the vessel was engraved with a crest.

Isobel had warned her of the intemperance of men such as this one when she had first arrived in Paris, but her friend’s timely cautions had been buried by need. Her grandfather had instructed her to make certain that she delivered a letter into exactly the right hands.

‘Le Comte de Caviglione at the Château Giraudon. Give this letter only to him, Lainie,’ he had said time and time again as life had left him. ‘Only to him. On your oath, promise me that you will do this, for he is a good man, a man to be trusted and he needs to know the truth.’

How naïve she had been to imagine she could just walk up to the door of the Château Giraudon and demand the ear of its master or expect the dignity and decorum that honourable men in the courts of England might have afforded her. Her dress had been a little gaudy, but the wig was an expensive one she had procured before leaving London. Perhaps it had been the presence of the women installed there already, their brightly coloured gowns and heaving bosoms giving an illusion of something that was normal here in Paris.

It had taken less than an hour for those downstairs to ply her with too much brandy as she had waited, trying not to appear as nervous as she felt.

Lord, if the Comte had come earlier she would have placed the missive in his hands and left as she intended: a dutiful granddaughter undertaking a final wish for a beloved grandfather. But now? She dared do nothing else to raise this man’s suspicions with all that lay between them, for if he ever guessed her name …

Against the breaking light Eleanor could see his profile. He was almost as young as she was and for that at least she was thankful.

‘Where are you from?’

His words held distrust and the caution of one used to betrayal. She noticed the small finger on his right hand was missing altogether as he laid his palm against his thigh.

‘Do you speak English?’ He had switched languages now and his accent was pure aristocracy. The change made her tense as layers of mystery clouded truth. Who was he? Why had he asked her that? She swallowed before she answered.

‘Pardon, monsieur, I do not understand what you are saying.’ She tried with all her might to make her words sound the same as one of the maids at Bornehaven, the soft Provençal French easy to mimic. The lines of his shoulders relaxed.

‘The south is a long way from the streets of Paris, ma petite. If you need money to return there …?’ He switched easily to French.

She shook her head. Payment could only mean obligation and with nothing to trade save her body, she was careful. He took the words a different way completely.

‘Then if you are hell-bent on staying in the city, perhaps you and I could come to some agreement.’ The fire in his eyes was searing sharp.

Eleanor pressed back against the bed, watching as he came closer. ‘Agreement?’

‘Your line of work is somewhat … insecure. I could offer you a less uncertain future.’

‘Uncertain?’

He began to laugh, his teeth white against the dawn, and in that moment Eleanor knew the pull of beauty, fierce and undeniable, his eyes marked with arrogance and temperance and authority. Not a man to be trifled with. But it was the hint of something else that held her still. A sadness, she thought, written beneath a careful detachment.

He stopped as he reached her and ran his thumb along her cheek. Without force. A bolt of awareness sizzled between them, making her heart beat faster.

‘Though if you truly wish me to halt, mademoiselle, then I will.’

He meant it. Honour came in unexpected places, she thought as she caught the depth of his dark, dark eyes, and the silence between them lengthened.

She should pull back, should shake her head and put an end to it all, but she was held immobile, her nipples tightening and the want in her belly finding a home in the place between her legs.

Le Comte de Caviglione! Her grandfather had said he was a good man, a trustworthy man, a man with some tie to the Duke of Carisbrook …

One time or ten more, what did it matter when the urgency in her being called only for release and already the damage was done, was it not? The pressing insistence of some emotion that was uncontrollable made her turn to him!

She did not flinch when he rolled down the cover and exposed her breasts, cold tightening desire and adding to the allure of surrender.

The velvet counterpane was burgundy, and stitched in gaudy golden thread. She felt the ridges of it against her feet when his hand ran across her throat and made them stiffen. Above the bed a net of gauze was anchored by ribbon, the cane hoop that held it painted in an antique peeling silver, so that the colour bled into the fabric. Beyond that, a mirror was fastened to the ceiling, catching the movement of them both through a veil of muslin, the pale outline of her breasts surprisingly wanton.

The reflection of the man beside her with his night-black eyes and magnetism left her little chance of refusal. The length of his hair fell past his shoulders, pale spun silver as she reached up to touch the colour.

He smiled, his glance allowing no modesty, and the distant sounds of a waking Paris were a counterpoint against her growing need.

‘How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

He turned her leg into the light. ‘What happened?’

The rings of blistering skin on her thigh stung as he touched it. ‘I tried to keep my gown on.’

‘Modesty in a whore is unusual.’

‘It was cold …’

He laughed this time and the sound was freeing, no longer caught up in control. Reaching for a drawer beside the bed, he removed a tin of salve, wiping the ointment on carefully, lessening the pain. When he had finished, he did not break contact, but spread her legs. The soft flesh throbbed in anticipation.

‘How much were you paid?’ The question was almost a caress.

She remained silent, the scale of payment for a lady of the night so far from her knowledge.

‘I’ll triple it.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘You won’t.’

A loud burst of shouting below made her start.

‘The party will not be over for a few hours yet,’ he added as his fingers left her skin. ‘And the minions of Beraud are restless. Make your choice, ma petite.’

She caught his hand and held it, slender and elegant, the nails trimmed and clean.

‘Then I am at your service, monseigneur.’ She had heard the other women downstairs use this phrase in the salons of the Château Giraudon. In the playing of a part came safety and she ran her tongue around her lips in the same way those below had mastered, slowly, and looked straight at him.

His eyes were a thousand times older than his face, the chocolate melted into harder shards of amber. Danger and distance and steely control, the fickle carelessness of youth constrained by another menace. But she took a chance on those eyes and those hands and on the words of a man who had not excused the actions of one who had hurt her.

‘Instead of payment I would ask of you a promise.’

He was listening, the stillness in him haunting.

‘A promise that come daylight proper you will spirit me out of this place in your carriage and let me go wherever I should will it without question!’

She was relieved when he nodded.

‘Is it just Paris you would escape, mademoiselle, or might I hope that the perils of the night have started to sink in?’

She only smiled as he peeled away the cover, a few feathers of down escaping the velvet, and one fluttering into the air to land on her stomach, white softness caught in a greying morning. He leant across and blew it away, the warmth tickling her skin and making her breath just stop. Her head arched into the pillow as a quick stab of passion lanced through her, the blood beating in her temples like a band, the base of sound blotting out everything save the sensation of want wound tightly through every pore on her skin.

He laughed. ‘Perhaps, ma petite, I do you a disservice after all, by letting you leave Paris and a profession that seems your milieu.’ He held the hardness in her still with his hands and waited till the shafts of need had passed before discarding the bedcovering altogether.

He should never have called her bluff, Cristo thought, but her words allowing him everything were a powerful aphrodisiac.

I am at your service, monseigneur.

God, he was twenty-three and hardly a saint, and if the Devil were to smite him into Hell for such an act then he was willing to take his chances. One time more or many, her virginity was already lost. The tremor in her hand as she had held it up to demand his promise to let her go free only added to his intemperance, and the way she looked him straight in the eyes saw to the rest. He was primed and ready, rock-hard with desire, the outline of his manhood raising the fabric of his breeches in a way that was … unseemingly desperate.

He wished he might have hidden it, hidden this power she had over his body, but he could not and would not and as the clock struck seven he realised that the morning was being eaten away and that his promise of freedom was close.

‘What is your name?’

Suddenly he wanted some truth. Something more than falseness and business.

‘Jeanne.’

She whispered the sound so that he had to strain to hear it. Jeanne?

He wrote the letters on her stomach with his tongue and traced the word again with his fingers, lightly. All the hairs on her right arm rose, the colour nowhere near as pale as her tresses. Almost dark. Her nipples budded into knots as he skimmed his touch across them and the heartbeat in her throat beat blue against the last smattering of summer freckles.

So delicate and breakable and so very fragile; just a girl on the edge of womanhood. His hand wandered downwards to feel the wetness, slick, tight and heated.

He moved then to the softness of her thighs and to the rounded shape of her hips, skirting the outline, making her know in his exploration how truly beautiful she was. Not just a whore. Not just a night or a coin. No contract in any of it save desire.

Her lips parted and her breathing quickened as his touch moved back to her centre and then away at the very last moment so that he did not quite fulfil her hidden want. But he felt it. Felt it in the way her skin rose against his hand, swollen with need.

Sweat beaded her upper lip and her forehead where her fringe had fallen. He knew that heat, too, in the place beneath his cheek as he bent to the juncture of her thighs.

This time she did shout out, shock resonating as his tongue reached in, tasting the fine wine of woman, and her hands threaded in his hair like an anchor, keeping him caught, as the flame does the moth.

The fire of youth and sex and passion. The lust of a hundred days of abstinence and many years of caution. The memory of what it was like once to only feel free. He drank like a man newly come from the desert until all that was left was her.

Her skin. Her smell. The feel of her fingers in his hair, holding him closer.

‘Jeanne.’ He moved back as he said her name and when no flicker of recognition passed into her summer-blue eyes he knew even that was a lie.

Still, he could not care. She was here and he was here and her blood on his sheets more real than any falsehood could ever be.

He moulded the swell of her breast into the palm of his hand and lifted the softness. Full fat abundance fell across the space between his first finger and his thumb. No little girl here. Her chest rose, fast and then faster.

Bringing her face to his, he opened her mouth to a kiss, surprising himself by the want, and when her resistance faltered all he knew was bliss. Her tongue, her cheeks, her face in his hands turning to him, the pull of knowledge, the sharp tang of certainty, the urge to own and keep and possess.

When he unlaced his breeches and lifted her onto his lap she did not fight him, and when she felt the tip of his sex pause for a second before pressing inwards, she welcomed the deep ache of it as her head lolled upon his shoulder. Submitting. Yielding. Nothing essential save the heavy rigidness of his manhood felt in the core of her body.

‘Ahh, sweetheart,’ he said, dampness on his forehead as her breasts fell heavy between them. Eleanor revelled in his expertise, in his finesse, in the way he built her hunger along with his own ‘til there was nowhere for either of them to go. Except up and away into the realms of fantasy and delight, and the sheer relief of orgasm.

He held her afterwards this time, against his chest, stroking her back with his fingers as the noises of the traffic outside became louder. His shirt of the finest linen was damp in sweat and she wondered why he had not discarded it, the smell of musk and man embedded in the fabric. Perhaps it was because of the scars she had felt raised upon his back when her fingers had lingered there?

Caught in a world with no one else near, she became braver and leant over to trace her tongue around the shape of his ear exactly as he had done to hers.

His breath simply stopped and the scent between them was pungent and insistent, another binding that held them, another sense fuelled by wonderment.

Cristo let her take him this time, his control slipping into an unfamiliar acquiescence. He liked the way she held him tentatively, with the palm of one hand splayed against his chest and the hard length of his manhood pressing deep into her stomach.

When the other fingers curled around his shaft he tensed and she pulled away, until his fingers again found hers and returned them, the pure uncertainty leaving him breathless.

He wanted to move, wanted to topple her beneath him, but she held him with her fingers, her breasts grazing his chest and the length of her false hair tying him to immobility.

‘God, help me.’ His voice sounded nothing like it usually did and this time he spoke in English, a sure sign of just how far his restraint had slipped. Turning, his body covered hers, heavy and true, as he drove in hard because there was no moderation left in him, no restraint or inhibition. The shuddering finality of his release brought him a liberation he had long thought of as past.

‘God.’ His voice was not kind as he slipped from her a good twenty minutes later and crossed the room to the privacy of his bath chamber, the oath repeated again as he comprended the full enormity of what had just happened. Beraud’s purchased whore was making him care again, feel again, hope again.

Laying his forehead against the cool silver mirror, he closed his eyes. The girl was dangerous with her alabaster skin and her elemental sensuality. In his world, anything of value was a way of losing control, the weakness of concern an easy weapon for those who would want to harm him. And there were so many who did!

He needed to have her gone before others sensed an attachment and used her innocence as a pawn, needed to protect her in the only way that he still could.

Pulling on his breeches and finding another shirt, he walked back into the room, the anger marking his movements with haste.

Chapter Three

Eleanor could barely understand all that had just happened.

Now he looked angry, unemotional, a different shirt buttoned full around his neck. No longer biddable. His hair was tied tightly into a queue and slid down the silk on his shoulders, an overlord of the dark underbelly of Paris, the four fingers still left on his right hand all bejewelled.

A stranger, only that, no vestige left of the lost hours shared between them. No remnant of a softer man who might truly cherish her. Just danger and hazard and difference, and a choice of life that showed in the hard lines of his body and face.

Eighteen and set apart from everything now, a fallen woman, a stupid woman, a woman who would never again quite fit in to the strictly governed world of her upbringing. Spoiled goods. What husband should want her?

Her breath came quick and shallow as she fought back the pooling tears!

She was going to cry now, he could see that in the way she tipped her head down and dropped her shoulders. A girl who had made a choice she regretted, her deep red lipstick smudged across her mouth like a wound.

‘Where are your clothes?’ He made no effort at all to moderate his voice.

‘Downstairs in a b-b-blue chamber, but my gown was badly torn.’ Fright had made her shake, the cover she was draped in shivering with some force. Excusing himself for a moment he unfastened the slats on the door and asked a servant to find her attire.

Then, moving to his wardrobe, he found a woollen jacket and a satin skirt that some woman had left here a few months back. ‘Put these on for now.’

She reached out for them and he added a scarf of fine wool from the many lined up at the back of his closet, noticing the feminine way she fashioned it around her neck. Her long wig was caught up in the heaviness of the layers and he saw darker locks below. All a ruse?

Interest sharpened. ‘How well do you know Beraud?’

‘He is one of my aunt’s clients.’

‘Then if you know what is good for you, ma chérie, you will stay away from him. His tastes run to the more eclectic …’ He tapered off, tired of trying to warn her, tired of taking responsibility for a whore who knew exactly what it was she was doing.

He could not save them all. He had learned that truth years ago when the first woman to plead for assistance had spent his gold on a bottle of the finest cognac and thrown herself off the bridge of the Pont d’Alma. Her body had been dragged up with his engraved watch in her hands and the weight of the law had descended, demanding answers that brought him notice he was far from wanting. Since then he had been much more careful.

He looked away as she stood and dressed, the slight reflection of her outline all that was left to him in the window. Even that he eschewed for the view outside, the first stirrings of the carriages and people in the vicinity of the Rue Pigalle.

Dislocated. One word rent from all that he so usually kept hidden, the sheer and utter waste of life and goodness and innocence slapped against a harder, more selfish world.

His world! Falder Castle glimmered like a golden promise on the edge of memory, the endless waves of Return Home Bay calling out in a hollow chant, ‘Come back, come back, come back. ‘

But he couldn’t, not ever, the consequences of sins binding him to the necessity of distance.

Shaking his head, he refused to think about the past and as he caught Jeanne’s measured glance he made himself relax.

A layer of tragedy coated her seducer’s night-dark eyes. Eleanor saw it even as he smiled and the core of her anger melted just a fraction. He was beautiful. She doubted she had ever seen a more beautiful man, even with his overlong hair and clothes that would not be out of place in a theatrical production in the West End of London. As she looked around, the room gave the impression of a faded glory, the strips of silk and velvet on his bed mirrored in the heavy curtains and ornate corded ties at the doublesashed windows. A piano of considerable proportion stood against the farthest wall, sheet music draped across the top. Books stacked in piles on the floor completed the tableau, the titles in an equal measure of both French and English.

With clothes on she felt braver, standing to run her fingers across the spines. Not lightweight reading, either. Moving then to the piano, she pressed down on a note of ivory, the sound echoing around the room in perfect pitch.

A well-used and well-maintained piano by Stein. She read the make in the words above the keyboard. The frothy, vivid orange skirt she wore swung out from her legs as she turned, surprising her with its easy movement—the sort of garment a dancer might use or a courtesan? With no undergarments the satin was cold against her bottom.

A short rap on the door took all her attention and with surprise she saw the man who entered was dressed exactly as her own grandfather’s butler might have been at the turn of the century.

‘Milord.’ His accent was pure Northern England! ‘The carriage is readied.’

Carriage? She could go? Now? Le Comte de Caviglione would keep his promise free of question and all consequence? Or was she to be taken somewhere else?

‘I would thank you for keeping your word, sir …’

She broke off when a bejewelled hand was raised, as if her appreciation was of absolutely no interest to him.

‘Are these items yours?’ He gestured towards a serving girl who had walked in behind the old man carrying her cape, boots, hat and purse.

A great wave of redness surged into Eleanor’s face as all attention settled upon her, for, with the tumbled bed linen and the scent of brandy and sex, the room held no mystery as to what had happened there. Servants talked with as much fervour and detail as did any daily broadsheet and the contents of her bag would give extra clues again.

Could she even begin to hope that the letter was still inside? That the promise she had given to her grandfather might still be honoured?

The older servant stepped forwards with her possessions. ‘These items were left in the blue salon, mademoiselle.’

‘Thank you.’ Reaching up, Eleanor fastened her hat. With no mirror the task was more difficult than she had anticipated and the wig made it harder again. Still, with a bonnet in place and the warm cape around her shoulders, hiding the mismatched assortment of articles beneath, Eleanor felt … braver. She pulled on her boots in less than a moment and, pretending to pick up something off the floor, extracted the letter as the Comte conversed with his man.

‘Milne will see you into a carriage. The driver has been instructed to take you where you would wish to be set down.’

Hardly daring to believe that the promise of freedom was so very close, she followed the old man out even as the Comte de Caviglione turned towards the window, dismissing her in the way of a man who, after using a whore for a night, is pleased to see the back of her come the morning.

Tucking her grandfather’s sealed envelope into the folds of the tumbled sheets as she passed the bed, she saw that the dawning sun had bathed the Comte’s hair in silver.

Cristo watched as the carriage pulled away on the driveway below, the white pebbles caught in the eddy of the wheels reminding him of another place, another home and far from here.

His hands fisted at his sides and emptiness was a taste in his mouth, sour and lonely. He longed for a greener land and a house that sat in the cleft of a hill with oaks at its back and roses in the gardens.

Falder.

The name echoed in the corners of regret; shaking his head, he turned to the hearth, leaning down for the kindling in a box near the fire. The simple task of catching sparks calmed him, made the fear he could feel rolling in his stomach more distant.

When he had finished he reached for the leather pouch in the hidden drawer of his armoire and sent the previous week by The Committee.

Secrets helped. Codes demanded single-mindedness and logic, searching for a pattern amongst the random lines of alphabet and numbers. Conradus’s book and Scovell’s principles made it easy and his interest quickened. His cipher wheel sat on the desk at hand.

Hours lay before him to be used up in concentration and attention. No sleep. No dreams. No lying in the grey of morning and wondering how the hell he had come to such a pass.

The bold scent of the girl lingered though, distracting him. Making him hungry. Again. For her warmth and the feel of flesh. Unspoiled.

He picked up his pen and dipped the quill into ink, blotting it before setting the nib onto paper. Her locket lay on the table before him, the chain of gold thin and delicate. He remembered the look of it around her neck, fragile and pale, the skin almost translucent.

He traced the certain shape of it in his mind. There had been a time when he had not known anything of dying and killing, a time when the sound of death had been impossible to describe. He could not lie to himself that those who had met their Maker because of him all had perished for the greater good or for the Golden Rule. Intelligence was a game that changed as the seasons did, and greed had as much sway as loyalty. To king or to country.

Not to family. He had long since been cured of that.

The columns on his desk refocused. Page seventy-five, column C, the fourth word down. A message began to form in the mass of chaos, though a capital letter threw him. The calibration had been changed and then changed again, the common combinations no longer locked into pattern. Transposing always had a point, though, and he looked for a letter that appeared the most frequently.

R. He had it. Substituted for an E. Now he just had to find the system.

He had been eighteen when he had started out on the dangerous road of espionage. A boy disenchanted with his family and alone at Cambridge. Easy pickings for Sir Roderick Smitherton, a professor who had been supplying the cream of the latest crop of undergraduates for years to the Foreign Office; Cristo had topped the new intake in every subject, his skill at languages sealing the bargain.

When he started it had been like a game, the Power Politics of Europe under the fear-spell of the memory of Napoleon, a man who had won an empire by his skill of manoeuvre.

Cristo had arrived in Paris the son of a Frenchwoman and the bequest of her château had given him a place to live. His father’s liaison and his mother’s shame had had a few points to recommend it, at least, and he had set up a spy ring that worked inside a restless Paris where priests and prostitutes had become the mainstay of his intelligence.

He liked the hunt, those few hours that came between months of blinding boredom, for in them he found forgetfulness of everything, his life held in a reckless balance that was only the responsibility of others.

Pull the trigger and end it all.

He wondered at the resilience of the human condition every time his hands reached their own conclusion and reacted, the whirr of a bullet or the sharp, quick pull of a knife. Often in the moonlight and in the hidden corners of this city in spaces where people held secrets that might bring down a nation by a whisper of breath or a clink of coinage. Always counting. Not the lives that might fall on the toss of a dice or the shake of a head. Not that. Counting only the cost of what it took to stay in the game and one step ahead. And alive!

He pulled out a cheroot from the silver tin he kept in his top drawer and tapped the end against the fine mahogany of his desk. Wrong and right depended on one’s point of view, though he suspected that his own moral compass had long since been tarnished by expediency, and the misguided idea that he might have once made a difference was only a distant memory in the dark labyrinth that was his life.

The code before him blurred into nothingness and he stood and crossed to the window.

His carriage had not yet returned and he wondered where it was that ‘Jeanne’ had wanted to be taken. He should have gone, of course, just to make certain that she arrived safely and that the destination was noted.

‘Mon Dieu!‘ The words were loud against the silence and his breath frosted the glass. With an unusual sense of poignancy he wrote a J in the mist and rubbed it out just as quickly, the regret in him surfacing.

He could find her again. Or he could lose her for ever, in the wilderness of mirrors and shadows where nothing was fixed.

Only grand deception and infinite loneliness—and if prostitution was the oldest profession in the world then surely the business of spying must have come in a close second.

Too close for comfort were he to reconnect with a woman who might mean something!

He watched as a few of the prostitutes walked from his house to be swallowed up by the traffic in the street, their gaudy nightdresses as out of place as a peacock in a farmyard barn. He hoped that one of them was Jeanne’s aunt and that something she had told him was true. Perhaps then they would laugh together about the night over a cup of tea and plan the evening’s frivolity.

The thought annoyed him, but he had no dominion over his little whore’s body and to demand so would only be foolish. Still, the anger would not dissipate. Nor the want. His eyes strayed to the bed trussed up into disarray, the cover that had warmed her tangled into many folds, the tail of it sweeping the floor. Empty.

Only the smell of her perfume remained, heavy in the air with the tang of alcohol! He drew in a breath to keep her closer and then stopped.

No. Jeanne’s association with Beraud could only be dangerous for them both. Reaching for the tumbled sheets, he tossed them into the blazing fire at his hearth and watched as linen caught flame. Better to leave her in memory. Delightful. Innocent. Always young. He only wished that he had known her name.

Dropping the medallion into a box of oddments in the bottom drawer of his desk, he had resolved to put her from his mind when his glance was caught by parchment flaring brighter than fabric.

A letter. He could see the scrawled writing on the burning envelope was addressed to him. Quickly he reached for the brass poker and extracted the remnants, stamping on the flames as they refused to die.

Only a few words remained on the sheet inside but they made his heart slow. Nigel. Murdered. Blame.

No coincidence at all then, but the beginning of blackmail. Turning to the wall beside him, he punched his fist hard against it until every knuckle bled.

Chapter Four

London—June 1830

Martin Westbury, the Earl of Dromorne, laid his newspaper down and looked across at his wife.

‘Now here is an interesting snippet, Eleanor. It seems the youngest Wellingham brother has returned from the Continent bearing both fortune and a foreign title to reside in London. They say he is looking for a home in the country. Perhaps he might find The Hall in Woburn to his liking? That is a property that might well suit such a man.’

Eleanor considered her husband’s query. ‘I know only a little about the Wellinghams. Is the family seat near there?’

‘No, indeed not, for Falder Castle lies in Essex. I am surprised he would not acquire property around those parts instead. He runs bloodstock, according to the paper, and is quite an expert on the choosing of prime horse flesh.’

The sounds of laughter interrupted their conversation as Martin’s nieces Margaret and Sophie came into the room. At seventeen and eighteen respectively they presented a picture of understated beauty, their gowns of matching yellow sprigged muslin floating in the breezy warmth of a new summer’s day. Their month-long sojourn in London with their mother, Diana, had made them full of energy.

‘We had a wonderful time last night at the Brownes’ ball.’ Sophie’s voice held such an edge of excitement that Eleanor was instantly curious. Looking across at her husband, she smiled.

‘Cristo Wellingham is the most handsome man to ever grace London, I swear it, and he dresses in clothes that have come straight from Paris. Did you ever meet him when you were there all those years ago, Lainie? I doubt that you could have missed him.’

Eleanor froze, the lost night in the winter of 1825 leaving her momentarily speechless.

‘Oh, she was far too busy with me, Sophie.’ Martin easily deflected the conversation and pretended to look more than hurt when the girls laughed.

‘We know that you are her heart’s desire, Uncle Martin,’ Margaret teased, ‘but can’t a girl at least look?’

Leaning over, Eleanor took her husband’s hand in her own, liking the warmth and familiarity. ‘Your nieces are young and frivolous and their shallow measure of a man’s worth is a testimony to that fact.’

‘How cruel you are, Lainie.’ Sophie’s tone was soft. ‘But your insult must also apply to the other young ladies who were at the Brownes’ last night.’

‘When is this demigod next in circulation?’ Martin’s question was threaded with humour.

‘Tonight. There is a large gathering at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. A comedy by James Planché is showing and it is supposed to be very good.’

‘Perhaps we should go?’ Martin’s voice sounded stronger than it had in a while, but Eleanor began to shake her head, a vague disquiet building behind her smile. Something was wrong, she was sure of it, and yet she could not put her finger on just exactly what it was.

‘Please, Eleanor. It has been ages since we all went out and if Martin feels up to it?’

‘Of course! Our box has been severely neglected of late, and I am sure your mother would also enjoy the outing, Sophie.’

Cristo watched the rain from the window of his house overlooking Hyde Park. Summer rain slanting across the green grass blurred the paths that crossed the common.

He lifted the brandy he had brought with him from Paris and took a liberal swig straight from the bottle. His brothers would be here soon and he would need all the succour he could muster. He wished he could have cared less than he did about what it was they might say to him, but the wildness of his youth had alienated him entirely and they had probably been as happy as his father to know he was leaving England. His father’s first letter to find him when he eventually reached Paris had made certain he understood that returning to the family fold was not an option. The memory still hurt, but he shoved it aside. He could help none of it and what was done, was done.

Only masquerade. Only deception. England and its airs and expectations made him take another good mouthful of brandy and then another. He should not have come back, but ten years on foreign soil felt like a lifetime and the soft green heart of England had called to him even in his dreams.

‘Would you be wanting your black cloak, or your dark blue one this evening, my lord?’

Milne, his butler, held a cape on either arm.

‘The black, I think. And don’t wait up for me tonight, for I shall be late.’

‘You said the same yesterday, my lord. And the night before that.’

Cristo smiled. Milne’s frailty worried him, but the old man had too much pride to just take the substantial amount of money that Cristo had tried to give him and retire. Paris had aged him, too. Just one more blame resting upon his shoulders with the shady dealings in the Château Giraudon, sordid repayment for Milne’s devotion and loyalty and belief. In him. It was a relief to leave it all behind.

‘My brothers should be here within the hour. If you could show them up.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And if you could ask the housekeeper to prepare tea.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

He placed the bottle of brandy on his desk inside a cabinet and closed the doors. Alcohol was one of the factors in his lengthy estrangement and he did not wish for the evidence to be anywhere on show. Tea seemed an acceptable substitute.

The cravat at his throat felt as restrictive as the dark blue waistcoat lying over his crisp white shirt and the new tight boots hurt his heels.

‘Asher Wellingham, the Duke of Carisbrook, my lord,’ Milne announced, ‘and his brother, Lord Taris Wellingham.’

Cristo stood as the two men walked into the room, a scar that ran under Taris’s left eye giving the first cause for concern, though Cristo showed no evidence of it as he waited for speech. Asher and Taris looked older and harder. Neither smiled.

‘So you are back.’ Ashe had never been a man to beat around the bush.

‘It seems that I am.’ Cristo didn’t care for the cautiousness he heard so plainly in his words, but the distance between them was measured in a lot more than the few feet of his library floor.

‘You have blatantly ignored our many efforts to stay in touch with you,’ Ashe reminded him. ‘Over the years the notes you sent back indicated you held no fondness at all for the name of Wellingham or indeed for us. Yet here you are.’ Each word held a sharp undercurrent of blame.

‘Are you well?’ Taris spoke now, a note in the question that unexpectedly tipped Cristo off balance.

‘Very.’ Even in the many skirmishes of Paris his heart had not beaten so fast.

Asher looked around the room, taking in the lack of ornamentation, he supposed. Or of belongings! Taris’s glance, on the other hand, never wavered once.

‘Alice always hoped you would return.’ Ashe again. The barb tore at Cristo’s composure and he looked away.

Alice! The only mother he had ever known. Damn them. He felt the hand in his pocket grip the skin on his thigh. Damn England and damn family. Damn the hope that had never been extinguished, even in the most terrible of times.

‘As it seems you are here to stay, I have arranged your introduction back into society and the family fold in the guise of a theatre visit. With a lot of darkness and distraction we should at least look as if we enjoy being a family and if this is going to work at all, appearances matter.’

Ashe’s irony was so very easily heard.

Cristo nodded, not trusting himself with more. He had left England vowing never to return, his wild ways at Cambridge inflaming loyalties and stretching the already-frayed love of his family. He had never fitted in, never dovetailed into the strict and rigid codes his father had laid down and when everything had finally unravelled after Nigel Bracewell-Lowen had died in the cemetery in the village near his home, Cristo’s father had been the first to tell him that he was not a true Wellingham, or a legitimate son of Falder.

Cristo swallowed back the bile of remembrance as he remembered his father’s final tirade. Ashborne had dallied with a French woman on his travels, a small meaningless tryst he had said that was ‘ill-advised, wrong-headed, inappropriate and more than foolish’. The words still had the power to hurt even all these years later, for what did one say to a parent so condemning of his very conception and of the woman who had birthed him?

The other side of the coin had also held damage. Alice, his stepmother, had taken him in at Falder and loved him like her own and if a whisper of his true parentage was ever mentioned he had not heard of it. The three-month-old Cristo de Caviglione had become a Wellingham, his name written into the family Bible by Alice’s very hand. She had told him that much later when the tensions between him and his father had resulted in the truth being thrown in his face and she had hurried to London to plead with Cristo to stay.

Love and anger entwined in deceit, and now a different duplicity. Cristo hated the beaded sweat on his upper lip as his oldest brother outlined his plans for the evening.

‘Our wives shall also be accompanying us to the theatre.’ The tone Asher used was so very English.

Emerald Seaton and Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke! Cristo had kept up with the family gossip while in Paris and the two women were by all accounts as formidable as his brothers. He wished suddenly that he might have had a formidable woman at his side, too, dismissing the thought with a shake of his head.

‘There are bridges to cross if you are to gain acceptance here, given the wild ways of your youth and of your questionable exploits in Paris.’ Taris tilted his eyebrows in a way that gave the impression of searching.

‘I quite understand,’ Cristo answered quickly. A public place would ensure distance and formality, the baser emotions of blame and redress submerged beneath the need for ‘face’. Years and years of an upbringing that revered the word ‘proper’ would at least see to that. It was a relief.

The tea that his housekeeper bustled in with seemed a long way from the good idea that he had initially thought it, and her rosy smiling face was the antithesis of all expressions in the library.

When she left he was glad, the plumes of steam from the teapot and the three china cups and saucers beside it little harbingers of a life that he had left and lost, a very long time ago.

Ashe was already showing signs of retreat. ‘Then we will see you tonight.’

‘You will.’

‘At half-past seven.’

‘On the dot.’

Taris raised the black ebony cane he held towards the teapot. The dimpled silver ball on the end of it glimmered in the light. ‘I’d like a cup.’

‘It’s tea, Taris.’ Ashe’s explanation was given quietly.

‘I know.’

‘You don’t damn well drink the stuff.’

Cristo watched as Taris brought out a hip flask from his jacket pocket and unscrewed the top. ‘I just asked for a cup.’

Merde. Cristo remembered his brothers’ banter with an ache. Many years younger, he had never really been a part of such repartee, no matter how much he had wanted it.

Reopening the cupboard door, he raised two crystal glasses from the green baize beside a new bottle and placed the lot down before them. ‘Help yourselves.’

‘You won’t join us?’ Ashe again.

‘I try to ration myself these days.’

‘Ashborne would be pleased to know of it.’

The mention of their father fell bitter between them, the past knitting uneasily into a growing silence.

‘I doubt he would care much either way, actually.’

His meaning settled on his brothers’ faces as a question and he wished he might have taken such bitterness back, the sheer anger in his words giving away much more than he had wanted.

‘Perhaps you did not know that he left this world calling your name?’ Ashe’s expression held all the indignation that his ducal title afforded him.

‘A death-bed wish for clemency is such an easy request given he could barely stand my company in life.’ Cristo had recovered his equilibrium, though Taris began to speak with a great deal of emotion.

‘With the reputation you have garnered in Paris, perhaps he was right to send you away. The Carisbrook title is an old and venerable one after all, and it needs each and every one of us who bear it to bring it proudly through the next decades.’

An argument that might hold more weight were I a true Wellingham.

Cristo almost said it, almost blurted the sentence out with little thought for consequence, raw anger still holding the power to hurt. But the memory of Alice stopped him.

Better to smile, the illusion of a family tied in blood and ancestry and one unbroken line of history more palatable than the other face. His brothers’ dark hair shone in the lamplight, like a stamp of belonging, or a badge of title. So very simple if you only knew where to look! His own reflection in the polished mirror made him turn away, the silvered fairness belonging to a different lineage altogether.

Gulping back the last of his brandy Taris poured himself another, the clock on the mantel chiming the hour of three. ‘So you are home for good, then?’

‘It’s my plan.’

‘How did you lose your finger?’ Ashe’s interest was almost dispassionate—a conversation topic as mundane as the weather or the happenings at the last ball.

‘On a ship after leaving England. My opponent came off worse.’

‘Rumour has it that a good many of your opponents have “come off worse,” as you put it.’

‘Rumour is inclined to favour exaggeration.’

‘One false step back here and society will crucify you.’ Asher’s voice held a hard edge of warning. ‘In Paris the extremes of human behaviour might well be tolerated. Here you won’t have that luxury, and I won’t stand idly by and watch you squander the Wellingham name. Neither will Taris.’

Now they were coming to it. No more vague innuendo or ill-defined familial congeniality. His careless past had caught up with him and the gloves were off.

‘I did not come home for that.’

‘Then why did you come?’

For a moment Cristo thought to lie. To merely smile through it all, and just lie, but here in the heart of England he found that he could not.

‘I came back in order to live.’

Neither of his brothers answered him and he felt the muscle along the side of his jaw ripple as he held his silence.

‘God.’ Ashe swore and then swore again as the sun broke through the clouds outside, flooding the room with light. Taris looked up into it, holding his left hand to his face in a peculiar movement, the line of his fingers open to the warmth.

‘Lucinda sends you her love,’ he said as he lowered his arm.

His sister.

‘Did she marry?’

‘No. She is adamant about remaining a spinster.’

‘Quite a choice.’

‘The same could be said of your preferences.’

Ashe collected his gloves and hat from the chair beside him and Cristo stood when they did, pleased that in the years between then and now that he had grown a good two inches taller than either of them. He shook their hands as a stranger might, vaguely aware of the crest of the Carisbrooks engraved into the heavy gold of his oldest brother’s ducal ring.

‘We will see you this evening, then.’

‘Indeed.’

He watched as they followed Milne out of the room and when the door shut sat on the arm of the sofa and balanced there, neither standing nor sitting. The day darkened as he continued to look out of the window, listening to the bells of some church mark off the hours and the occasional shout of English voices from the streets outside.

Home.

The smell of it all was different. Softer. Greener. Known.

I came back in order to live! The idea of it spun untrammelled in the corners of his memory and the secrets that he held marked his heart with blackness.